Root Sports Houston to make Rockets debut on Monday

Root Sports Houston will debut Monday as the new television home of the Astros and Rockets with the Rockets’ road game at Memphis. Comcast SportsNet Houston’s final game broadcast will be the Rockets’ Friday home game against Philadelphia.

In between, Houston’s road game Sunday at Oklahoma City will air on NBA TV. The Rockets have requested the suspension of the normal home market blackout for NBA TV games so that the Rockets-Thunder game can be seen via all outlets that carry NBA TV.

A federal bankruptcy judge two weeks ago approved a Chapter 11 reorganization plan selling CSN Houston, the Astros-Rockets-Comcast-owned outlet that has been in bankruptcy since September 2013, to DirecTV and AT&T.

The new owners will rename the channel as Root Sports Houston and offer carriage on DirecTV and U-verse as well as Comcast cable and other existing CSN Houston carriers.

Officials with the team and DirecTV had no comment Tuesday on the transition. Channel positions on assorted carriers for Root Sports Houston, which will be the fourth regional channel operated by DirecTV Sports Networks, have not yet been made public.

CSN Houston signed on in the fall of 2012 but was unable to arrange carriage on DirecTV, Dish Network, U-verse or Suddenlink. That limited the network’s income and prevented it from paying full rights fees to the Astros in 2013. When the Astros threatened to pull their broadcast rights for nonpayment, Comcast plunged the network into involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy case continued for a year, with a critical turning point coming in March when Comcast reversed its announced plans and said it would not bid to buy the network. After negotiating with potential investors, the Astros and Rockets reached an agreement to sell the channel to DirecTV and AT&T, who have announced plans to merge.

The teams and Comcast will lose their equity in the channel, and 96 of 141 employees will be laid off, but Rockets and Astros games will be available to most of the 2.2 million TV households in the 20-county Houston area for the first time since the 2011-12 Rockets season and 2012 Astros season.